Quinlan's Quilt - Part Three

[plasticprophet]

The macabre pair lurched forward along the path. The silver desert was vast and unforgiving, but here and there the air sparkled. I looked closer and saw that the fine silver sand was floating lazily from the sky and collecting in cones dotting the landscape. My eyes were well adjusted now to the unusual landscape. All was lit from above, though neither sun nor moon graced the heavens. The sky was not a color but rather the cessation of sight. It was a darkness so black that it could never be seen by human sight. My eyes watered as I tried, but with no success. I turned my attention back to the thin and fat men progressing still down the black path. The fat man had gathered speed and was bounding now in a straight line. The thin man no longer wore his feel-less smile. Indeed he seemed to have fallen asleep while standing. The quilt billowed ominously around his body, accentuating his perfect features. I looked toward the horizon, trying to determine a possible destination. And I looked and saw a tower penetrating the horizon like a pin, tiny in the distance, yet with such weight that I felt urged into obeisance. Surely to this tower were the men, rider and ridden, progressing. But even as I made this judgment, the path jerked suddenly to the right, and the fat man continued his gallop along it. The path soon jerked sharply left, then left again, and finally right, putting them back on a razor line toward the distant tower. I looked at this cul-de-sac that the path had formed and saw to my horror a heap of the dead. Gray faces stared blankly in all directions, some frozen in terror, some in pain, and others in peace. The bodies were linked by arms curved at the elbows, chained in a twisted knot. As I tried to make sense of this senseless sight, the black path striping the ground swelled and bent so that it formed a bulge which blanketed the dead pile and hid it from sight.

The countless people I have unintentionally hurt by my actions - the hearts and minds murdered by my careless rampage - have every right to have abandoned me. My issues with abandonment are many and diverse, but I never until recently stopped to think about what part I had played in their departures. I push and push and push away those who care for me most, and am continually surprised when they stop resisting my push. Suddenly, I am no longer to blame. I have been abandoned. I have been wronged. If I had only taken pause, I might have noticed the edge over which I came dangerously close to pushing many of them.

I remain without absolution for my crimes against love.